James Wright: The New GI Bill: It's a Win-Win Proposition

by James Wright [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

When I was a youngster in the Midwest in the years after World War II, many people still called Memorial Day "Decoration Day," acknowledging its roots as a national day of mourning for the Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War. After World War I, the day became a time to honor all those who had died in uniform. For the past several years, however, it has been an occasion to remember the men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to think of our obligations to those who are still serving overseas or recovering at home.

Although national support for the wars is as limited today as it was for Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, most people acknowledge that the policies that have taken us into the Middle East are not the fault of the men and women in the military. Yet few Americans realize that the young people who are serving their country in Iraq and Afghanistan will not receive the kind of assistance that their grandfathers received when they returned from World War II. Educational benefits for the current generation of volunteers, whether they served in the regular military or in the Reserves or National Guard, are seriously inadequate. The original GI Bill covered the full cost of a veteran's education, but today the maximum assistance covers only 60 to 70 percent of average "tuition not room or board" at a public four-year university. In the coming days, Congress will consider a new GI Bill (S 22), sponsored by Sen. James H. Webb, a Democrat of Virginia, that will provide the support veterans deserve.

The idea of providing returning veterans with benefits as both a reward for their service and as a means of enabling them to reintegrate into civilian life dates to the early history of this country. Revolutionary War soldiers received military pensions, land grants, and other forms of care, depending on their service and its location. After the Civil War, Union soldiers (but not, until much later, their Confederate counterparts) received pensions. In anticipation of the large numbers of returning American troops from World War I, the government developed a comprehensive package of veterans benefits that included disability payments, pensions, rehabilitation, and vocational training.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, faced with the prospect of some 15 million returning military personnel from World War II, signed the GI Bill, in 1944.

Formally known as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act, the GI Bill provided tuition, room, and board, as well incidental expenses for books, to any veteran who attended a four-year college or university, a two-year college, or a trade school. The bill, which applied to both women and men and provided benefits regardless of race, was initially opposed by some of the leading educators of the day, who worried that the bill would open up their institutions to unqualified applicants.

Open up the academy is exactly what the bill did, although the veterans proved to be more than qualified. In the first year alone, one million of them used the benefit to attend college. Within a decade, eight million had attended college or vocational school. Colleges and universities across the country saw great expansions of their student bodies and increasing numbers of veterans in their classes. In 1947, at my own institution, Dartmouth College, 60 percent of the members of the incoming class were veterans.

The bill was largely responsible for the development of a new middle class, and it not only helped the returning veterans but also expanded American higher education. The "greatest generation" may well have made its greatest contributions as educated, resourceful, and creative civilians in the 60 years following the end of World War II. Before that, only one in 16 Americans had a college degree, compared with one in 5 by 1970.

Yet despite the overwhelming historical success of educational benefits for veterans, such support for those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan has, unfortunately, proved to be an unnecessarily complicated matter. Remarkably, Congress allowed the legislation for the new GI bill to sit for a year with no action on it. The three major arguments of those opposed: the expense of adding another entitlement program; Pentagon concerns that re-enlistments might suffer if too many people left the military to pursue higher education; and reservations by some in Congress about providing federal tuition dollars to wealthy institutions.

The estimated cost of the Webb bill is $45-billion in the first 10 years. We spend that much in less than six months in Iraq. Veterans' benefits are a cost of war, and support for them should not be held hostage to re-enlistment targets. While re-enlistments might indeed decline, a new GI Bill could also encourage more young people to sign up for military service.

Indeed, one of the military's greatest problems right now is declining enlistment. A more generous GI Bill would only improve the numbers and quality of enlistees. Access to higher education will give enlisted personnel the opportunity to successfully reintegrate into civilian life and will provide our country with another generation of well-educated citizens.

A few months ago, I spent some time visiting with Senator Webb and two of his Republican counterparts, John W. Warner, of Virginia, and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, discussing the GI Bill. We spent the most time on that third sticking point: the reluctance to give taxpayer dollars to elite, wealthy, private institutions. There is a perception among many people in Congress that colleges like Dartmouth are holding on to endowment dollars while raising tuition at rates beyond those of inflation. That perception is ill-founded, and the GI Bill should not be held up waiting on the resolution of that debate.

The three senators and I discussed a plan under which the GI Bill would provide for tuition payments up to the level of the most expensive public university in the state in which the veteran enrolls. For those who enroll in private institutions or as nonresidents at public institutions where the tuition charge is greater, then the institution and the government will split the difference. That is the good compromise that Senators Webb and Warner introduced last month in the revised legislation.

As I write, the new GI Bill enjoys support from 57 Senators and 275 members of the House. It has been endorsed by virtually every veterans' group and by major higher-education associations. Passage should be assured, but it is not. President Bush has threatened to veto any attempt to add the bill to his $108-billion funding request.

Our campuses are quieter than they were in the Vietnam era, so it might be easier for some people to forget the sacrifices of our Americans in the military. Now is a good time to remember them and to recall the responsibility we share to those who represent us. American colleges and universities should help meet that responsibility by urging Congress and the president to support legislation that will give veterans the educational opportunities that they have more than earned. Maybe this Memorial Day, as we mourn those whose sacrifice is forever, we can thank and invest in those who have survived and now wish to move on with their lives.

James Wright, president of Dartmouth College, served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1957 to 1960. He worked with the American Council on Education to create a national higher-education counseling program for severely wounded U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Originally published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.